Read Once Gone (a Riley Paige Mystery--Book #1) Page 18

  Chapter 15

  The man was awakened by his cell phone alarm. At first he didn’t know where he was. But he knew right away that today was going to be important. It was the kind of day he lived for.

  He knew that he had awakened in this strange place for a very good reason—because it was to be that kind of day. It would be a day of delicious satisfaction for him, and of sheer terror and indescribable pain for someone else.

  But where was he? Still half-asleep, he couldn’t remember. He was lying on a couch in a small, carpeted room, looking at a refrigerator and a microwave. Morning light streamed through a window.

  He got up, opened the door to the room, and looked out into a dark hallway. He flipped on the room light beside the doorframe. Light shined out into the hallway and into an open door across the hallway. He could make out a black-upholstered medical examination table with some sterilized white paper stretched along it.

  Of course, he thought. The free medical clinic.

  Now he remembered where he was and how he’d gotten here. He congratulated himself on his stealth and cunning. Yesterday he’d arrived at the clinic late in the day, when it was especially busy. In the midst of the bustle of patients, he had asked for a simple blood pressure test. And she had been the nurse who tested him.

  The very woman he had come here to see. The woman he had been watching for days, at her home, when she was shopping, when she came here to work.

  After the blood pressure test he’d squeezed himself into a tight space deep inside a supply closet. How innocent all the staff had been. The clinic had closed and everyone had gone home without even checking the closets. Then he’d crept out and made himself at home right here, in the little staff lounge. He’d slept well.

  And today was going to be a very remarkable day.

  He turned the ceiling light off immediately. No one outside must know that anyone was in the building. He looked at the time on his cell phone. It was just a few minutes before seven a.m.

  She would arrive any minute now. He knew this from his days of surveillance. It was her job to get the clinic ready for both physicians and patients every morning. The clinic itself didn’t open until eight. Between seven and eight, she was always alone here.

  But today was going to be different. Today she would not be alone.

  He heard a car pull into the parking lot outside. He adjusted the venetian blinds just enough to look outside. It was her, all right, stepping out of the car.

  He had no trouble steadying his nerves. This was not like those first two times, when he had felt so fearful and apprehensive. Ever since the third time, when everything had flowed so smoothly, he knew he had really hit his stride. Now he was seasoned and skillful.

  But there was one thing he wanted to do a little differently, just to vary his routine, to make this time a little different from the others.

  He was going to surprise her with a little token—his own personal calling card.